In the late 1990s, Gerald Combs needed a tool to analyze network problems. Portable sniffers were available at the time, but they were costly. Gerald developed Ethereal with the help of some friends, and this later became Wireshark. It has been around for over 20 years and continues to evolve and improve over time.
Wireshark's strength is the ability to decode the captured bits into a readable form by using decoders or dissectors.
Dissectors provide information on how to break down the protocols into the proper format according to the appropriate RFC, or other specifications.
Wireshark can decode hundreds of different protocols. New dissectors are periodically added to the library. In addition, you can decode priority and specialty protocols by developing your own dissector.
Wireshark is compatible with many other sniffers and has a wide range of file formats for import and export. Some of the other features include the following:
- Merge packet captures.
- Provide a detailed analysis of VoIP traffic.
- Create basic and advanced I/O graphs.
Wireshark can be installed on most OSes, including Windows, Solaris, Linux, and macOS. In the following graphic, we can see the simple and streamlined Wireshark welcome screen on a Windows OS:
After using Wireshark for any length of time, you can see how it can help network administrators to understand traffic flows, troubleshoot performance problems, or conduct a network baseline.